


there's an endless road to rediscover

by angelsdemonsducks



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Mild Angst, Reunions, but mostly just fluff, janus is Sir Not Appearing in this Fic, remus-typical disturbing imagery, remus: hey so how should i reunite with my brother, remus: i'm gonna do him bodily harm, virgil: i dunno you could try talking to him, virgil: please n O
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:07:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28030641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelsdemonsducks/pseuds/angelsdemonsducks
Summary: “Dude, are you okay?” Virgil asks. “You stopped talking.”He opens his mouth to say something along the lines of,holy shit, that’s my long lost twin brother over there,only to discover that his voice has stopped working. Huh. Funny, that.It's been fourteen years since Remus last saw his brother. Fourteen years, and here he is, in the pasta aisle of a grocery store of all places.There's hardly much dramatic flair to it, but never let it be said that Remus can't work with what he's given. Which is to say that Remus promptly runs him over with his shopping cart, and somehow, everything works out from there.
Relationships: Anxiety | Virgil Sanders & Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders, Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders & Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders
Comments: 39
Kudos: 252





	there's an endless road to rediscover

**Author's Note:**

> Additional content warnings for swearing, mentioned (imagined) eye trauma, mentioned unreality, and vague but somewhat negative mentions of the U.S. foster care system.
> 
> Title from 'Hey Brother' by Avicii, because I simply couldn't help myself.

Remus sees his brother for the first time in fourteen years in the pasta aisle of a grocery store.

This is weird for multiple reasons. The first is that his brother is here in the first place. He wouldn’t say that he’d given up on ever finding Roman, but he can be practical when he wants to, and the fact is that he’s turned up nothing in years of searching, and it is one bitch of a wide, wide world. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack made out of needles, only you’re looking for a particular needle, not just any old needle, and the more you look, the more the rest of the needles get to stab your eyes out, because it _hurts_ to look for so long and come up with diddly-squat.

The second reason is that it’s a grocery store. A generic, chain grocery store. Remus has pictured this reunion loads of times, but he can’t say that he ever thought it would be in a grocery store. Where’s the drama in that? Where’s the _panache_? The narrative payoff?

“Dude, are you okay?” Virgil asks. “You stopped talking.”

He blinks himself back into reality. Right. He’s sprawled out in the basket of the shopping cart while Virgil pushes him around, because he deserves to travel in style and also Virgil thinks it’s hilarious, even if he won’t admit it. They’re perusing cold cuts— or rather, Virgil is perusing cold cuts while he speculates loudly and at length about the meat packing industry and how wonderfully disgusting it is. He doesn’t know where Janus got off to. He’ll probably show up fifteen minutes later with an expensive bottle of wine tucked under his arm, despite the fact that they are all too fucking broke to be buying expensive wine.

He opens his mouth to say something along the lines of, _holy shit, that’s my long lost twin brother over there_ , only to discover that his voice has stopped working. Huh. Funny, that. So, he cranes his neck to peer up at Virgil instead.

“Seriously, you good?” Virgil asks, and yep, his voice box is still broken, so he gestures in the vague direction of the pasta aisle. And the people standing there. Roman’s not alone; he hadn’t bothered to pick up on that at first, but there are two other people with him. None of them are riding in their shopping cart, which is both boring and disappointing. He would think that Roman would have more exciting taste in friends.

God. That’s Roman. He’s just. Right over there. All these years and he’s _right fucking there_.

“Uh, pasta? You want pasta?” Virgil squints in the direction he’d indicated. “I guess we can get pasta. After those guys leave so we don’t— oh, hey, wait, that’s Patton and Logan. I told you about them, right?”

He vaguely remembers Virgil mentioning a couple of guys he’d met during one of his shifts at Starbucks. He was too busy teasing him about his blush to pay attention to the details. He’s kind of regretting that now.

“Oh, shit,” Virgil is muttering. “Wait, are we acquainted well enough for me to go over there? No, bad idea, that’ll come off weird. Better to stay over here, pretend not to notice them. Except what if they see us first and think I’m avoiding them? And who’s that guy? I don’t know that other guy. Fuck, shit, I hate running into people at the grocery store, it’s too fucking awkward—”

“That’s my brother,” Remus says. His voice sounds a little bit like he’s been swallowing safety pins. Or haystack needles.

Virgil stops. “What.”

“In the, uh, scarf. That’s my brother.”

It’s like saying it makes it more real, jolts him out of his stupor. Fourteen years since the foster care system separated them without so much as a method of getting in contact, and Roman is here. He can talk to his brother again.

“What do you mean, that’s your brother?” Virgil hisses. “Like, your actual brother?”

“Maybe he’s a doppelganger sent to kill me,” he concedes cheerfully, pushing himself into a position by which he can maneuver himself out of the shopping cart. “But, uh, I think know my own face when I see it.” He hesitates. “Unless it’s not my face, and what I see in the mirror every day is actually a hallucination, and every aspect of reality is false and—”

“Cut it _out_ ,” Virgil says, slapping him on the arm. He doesn’t look too mad, though, so he’ll count it as a win. “So, that’s Roman?”

“Yeah,” he says. A giddy, fuzzy feeling fills him from head to toe, like his blood’s been replaced with soda. Mountain Dew, probably. The color is fun. Like acid. Whenever he drinks it, he pretends that it’s dissolving him from the inside out, which isn’t actually too far from the truth, really, though—

“Wow. Shit. Are you gonna go… say hi? Fuck, I don’t know.”

Right. His brother. He rocks back and forth on his heels.

“I should,” he says. “I definitely should.” He cocks his head. “What if he’s forgotten me?”

Wow, he hadn’t known _that_ was a worry until it popped out of his mouth. Like Athena, springing from Zeus’ head fully formed.

But actually, it’s a valid concern, isn’t it? Every problem they ever had with foster families when they were kids was Remus’ fault. Everyone always loved Roman, sweet, brave, charming Roman. But Remus was always too loud, too weird, too much of a nuisance.

So much so that eventually, the system stopped trying to place them together. And that was that.

He couldn’t blame him, if Roman wanted to move on from the brother that never did anything but hold him back.

Virgil stares. “What? That’s bullshit,” he says. “Look, I know it’s rich for me to be saying this, but just go talk to him. I’ll— fuck, I’ll come too if you want? Be moral support? But if it were me, you’d make me do it and you know it.”

Very true. But Remus’ mind has always found it easy to spiral down into darker possibilities. Most of the time, he’s fine with that, has learned how to own it, to make it _his_ , but his brain conjures up an image of Roman turning away from him in disgust, and he doesn’t like that one bit. This is more than his usual thoughts, this is anxiety, steadily approaching fear, and he does not care for it but he’s not sure how to make it stop.

He knows how to bring Virgil out of his own head when he gets too deep. But he doesn’t know that he can apply that knowledge to himself. A drowning man can’t pull himself out of the water; he doesn’t have the right angle, the right leverage. A drowning man just dies, water filling his lungs as consciousness slowly fades, despair settling into him like the heavy stone that drags him down, down, down into the darkness, where untold horrors wait to feast on his flesh and burrow into his bones and gnaw on his—

Huh.

Roman is going for the macaroni.

Not just the macaroni. The last box of the _good_ macaroni. Not the cardboard-tasting stuff— Remus hates that kind, because when he wants to taste cardboard, he eats some actual cardboard, thanks. No, this is the good shit, the kind with real cheese that goes gooey and stringy and delicious when it’s warm, and noodles that don’t have a weird consistency after you cook them. There’s only one box of it left— _why_ is there only one box of it left?— and Roman is reaching for it, not even looking his way, saying something to Patton-or-Logan, and nope. Roman can’t have that. Remus has decided, just now, that he wants some macaroni, and his long lost brother does not get to show up in his grocery store and take the last box of the good macaroni.

“On second thought,” he says, “give me the cart.”

“What are you—”

He takes the shopping cart from Virgil’s hands, and aims it. And charges, ignoring Virgil’s protests.

There’s just enough room for him to build up some good speed. One of them, Patton-or-Logan, looks up, face falling into an expression of alarm, but it’s far too late for that.

Remus slams the shopping cart into Roman. Roman crashes ass-first onto the floor, and the macaroni is Remus’.

Finally, some good fucking food.

Everyone erupts into a flurry of motion and sound— one of Patton-or-Logan is saying something about calling security or a manager or something, which, boo, and the other one is fluttering nervously around Roman, and he can hear Virgil coming up behind him, muttering under his breath about how he’s the worst and now they’re going to get banned from _another_ grocery store, thanks Remus. But really, Remus only has eyes for Roman, who is visibly collecting himself. He doesn’t look too injured, which Remus supposes is good.

They make eye contact. Roman glares. Remus’ heart starts beating really weird and fast, like it’s trying to break out of his rib cage. That would be neat, he thinks, if it did that. He hopes someone would snap a picture.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Roman demands. His voice is pretty much exactly how Remus thought it would be; a lot like his own, but smoother, a bit deeper.

He brandishes the box of pasta with one hand, using the other to brace himself against his shopping cart.

“This, my good bitch,” he states, “is my fucking macaroni.”

Silence follows this proclamation.

“Wait,” Patton-or-Logan says, the one crouched by his brother, “Virgil?”

“Hi Patton,” Virgil says, and that answers that, he supposes. “Hi Logan. Sorry about him, I don’t know why we let him out of the house.”

“Excuse you, I’m a delight,” he returns. “And the last time you tried locking me in, I ate my way through the door.”

“You’re a menace, and we had to take you to the hospital after you swallowed wood shavings.”

“Semantics.”

“I’m sorry,” the one who must be Logan says, the one who’s wearing a necktie in a grocery store, and seriously, who is this square? “But what exactly is going on here?”

“That’s what I would like to know,” Roman says, finally clambering to his feet. “I’m not one to back down from a fight, but I can’t say I expected to be assaulted in a Kroger. Over mediocre pasta. Who exactly are you?”

He’s about to go for a fierce retort, because seriously? Mediocre pasta? This is the best macaroni, and anyone who says otherwise is wrong and a dumbass. But the final question makes the words dry up in his throat, and his mouth works silently for a few seconds. Roman keeps _looking_ at him, his expression wary and distant, like he’s regarding a stranger who just attacked him in the pasta aisle rather than his _brother_ who just attacked him in the pasta aisle. And it makes sense, he supposes, considering all the years that lie between them, but it hurts. Just a little bit.

“Oh my god,” Virgil groans. “This is painful.”

“Shut up, emo,” he shoots back. It’s more instinct than anything else, because everyone is still staring at him, which wouldn’t be a problem if _Roman_ weren’t still staring him, irritated and confused and expecting answers that Remus has no idea how to give. And he can’t help but think, what if he was right, earlier? What if Roman really was better off without him? What if Roman finally figured that out? Fourteen years is a long time to decide that seeing the last of him was good riddance to bad rubbish.

He runs his hand through his hair. Roman’s gaze follows the motion, and then his face falls slack.

“Oh my god,” he whispers. “Remus?”

Someone gasps. He doesn’t know who. He’s too busy panicking, just a little, and not saying anything, because once again, his tongue refuses to make the right shapes for words to come out. He should just get rid of it. Have someone cut it out. Useless tongue.

“Remus,” Roman says, sounding more sure of himself now. He takes a step closer, his eyes weirdly shiny. Like marbles. Or buttons. Shiny buttons in his eyes. Like in Coraline. “It is you, isn’t it?”

Remus shrieks and hits him with the pasta box. Not very hard; it’s at too awkward an angle. But he succeeds in shoving it in Roman’s face, vehemently, and Roman seems so surprised that he almost falls over again. Which gives Remus time to— what, to escape? That would be stupid. He didn’t think this through properly, but then, he so rarely does. Better to just go with it.

“You can’t have my eyes!” he shouts, because apparently his brain is still stuck on the Coraline thing, which, whatever, he’ll roll with it. Virgil emits a high-pitched noise.

“What?” Roman sputters, knocking the box away from his face. “What are you doing?”

“Funny that you think I know!” He pauses, considering. “Well, actually, I think I’m having an emotional breakdown, which I personally think is very cool and sexy of me. Hi. How’ve you been?”

He feels— he doesn’t know what he’s feeling. Probably because of that emotional breakdown. Or what he assumes is an emotional breakdown. He doesn’t know for certain that that’s what this is, but he figures that if ever there was a time to have one, this would be it. His heart is still beating too fast. He feels flushed, hyper, like his blood itself is singing. He thinks he could either go ten rounds with a gorilla or faint. Both seem equally likely, at this point. If he can find a gorilla.

“How’ve I—” Roman laughs, and it comes out wet and mushy-sounding. “Oh my god.”

And then, Roman takes a few more steps forward, too quickly for Remus to stop him or flinch away in case he’s trying for revenge for the whole running-him-over-with-a-shopping-cart thing. But it’s alright, because instead of doing that, Roman takes him by the shoulders, and then wraps his arms around him.

The world stills.

He can feel Roman’s heartbeat. It mixes with his own.

He breathes. In and out.

It would be a disservice to Virgil and Janus to say that it’s like remembering what home feels like. Virgil and Janus are the best home that he could ever have asked for. But this is like rediscovering an old favorite place after years of not being able to find it, like stepping out of the car for the first time in over a decade and looking at the skyline and feeling the wind on your face and remembering, _yes, hello, I was so happy here_. That’s what Roman’s hug feels like, and he can’t manage to command his arms to hug back, but Roman doesn’t seem to mind, so he slumps his weight against him instead, trying to convey _yes, hello, I’m so happy to see you, so happy you’re here_.

He turns his face in to the fabric of Roman’s scarf. It’s soft, though there are a few scratchy places where there’s lines of glitter interwoven in the fabric.

“I can’t believe it,” Roman says. “I can’t believe you’re— _god_ , Remus, I’ve been searching forever.”

His first instinct is to make a joke out of it, because he’s pretty sure that Roman didn’t mean to just call him God but that’s absolutely what it sounded like, and that’s the kind of thing that he likes to milk for all its worth. But his mind sticks on the second part, stops and stutters and refuses to focus on anything else.

“You were?” he asks, and even if his voice weren’t muffled by— wool? Is this a woolen scarf? Something different? He doesn’t know, but even if it weren’t there, he thinks that his voice would come out far smaller than he would like. He’s surprised that Roman can make out the words at all, but apparently he does, because suddenly he’s being held back a little, Roman’s hands gripping the sides of his arms. He’s frowning.

“Of course I was,” Roman says, like he can’t even believe that Remus would believe otherwise, and something warm starts fluttering in Remus’ chest cavity. “I— I kept calling the agency to find out where you were, but they wouldn’t tell me anything, and then all they would say was that you aged out, and I looked through social media but I couldn’t find you _anywhere_.”

He giggles. “Yeah, I don’t do so much with the social media,” he says. He’s tried, but he doesn’t have the attention span for it. It’s never exciting enough, especially after Janus banned him from doing Vine. He misses Vine. “I looked for you, too. Never turned up anything either.”

Roman stares at him for a moment, and then mutters a curse. “My last name was changed,” he admits. “When I was adopted, I took their name. I didn’t even think—”

He blinks. “Oh.”

He’s not sure what else to say. It’s sudden, this intrusion of reality, and now, all Remus can think about is the distance between them. The fact that Roman ended up with a loving family and he… didn’t. The fact that Roman was probably completely fine without him, that Roman didn’t _need_ him even if he apparently still wanted him, and Remus… well. He’s glad he has Virgil and Janus in his life now. He’ll be the first to admit that he’s always been a needy asshole. He doesn’t _do_ well without people, and the years between losing Roman and gaining Virgey and Jan had been. Just. The worst.

But. Roman still looked for him. Even if he didn’t need to, he looked. He wanted to find him again, wanted his weird twin brother who was never anything but trouble. Roman wanted him, still wants him, and that has to be the most important thing about all of this.

Roman is watching him, his expression twisted up in something that almost looks like desperation and almost looks like guilt, maybe, though Remus doesn’t understand why that is. Roman of all people has nothing to be guilty about, probably. Except for the name-change thing, but Remus gets that. If he’d been adopted, he probably would have had his name changed too. Maybe. Hard to say.

He should probably tell him this.

“I’m taller than you,” he says instead, because he’s allergic to sincerity. Maybe he’ll pull a Virgil and see if it can be, like, an understood thing. Easier on all sides, that way.

Roman’s expression immediately transforms into one of outrage, so the job gets done either way.

“What?” he all but shrieks, and Remus starts cackling, because he can’t help it, because some things, apparently, don’t change and Roman’s indignation is one of them. That makes him happier than he has any right to be, but he _wants_ to be happy right now, damn it, and he’s not good at denying himself things that he wants. “You are _not_! Logan, tell him he’s not!”

Logan— Remus wants to rip that necktie off his collar, wants to strangle him with it, wants to pull him closer, wants to do _something_ because seriously, _who_ wears a _necktie_ to a _grocery store_?— adjusts his glasses, looking between them with arched brows.

“Actually,” he says. “It would appear to me that your brother is correct. From my angle, it seems that he is, indeed, taller than you. Though I suppose that doesn’t account for shoe height.” He glances down at the floor, but ha! Joke’s on him, because Remus is wearing flats today, so there!

Roman makes a strangled sound, like a cross between a dying cow and two sheets of rusty metal scraping together, and Remus sticks his tongue out at him.

“I can’t believe this,” Roman mutters. “The audacity.”

But he’s not really mad. Remus used to be able to tell that easily, whether or not Roman was really upset or just being dramatic. It’s nice to know that he still can.

Somebody claps, short and quick like gunfire. Remus glances over, and it’s the other one, Patton, who looks nothing short of delighted. He almost squints, because looking at this man’s smile is a little bit like staring into the sun, he thinks, damage to the eyeballs and all.

“This is so exciting!” Patton says. “Ooh, we should have, a, a get together! We could watch movies!”

“Only if we also get to do each other’s nails,” he says. “And _only_ if someone paints mine the color of zombie vomit.”

Roman groans in unison with Virgil, like they’re on the same wavelength, plugged into the same radio. Or maybe it’s that thing where they both have fillings in their teeth that pick up on local radio waves and send them right into their skulls, so they’re literally on the same wavelength. 

“Do zombies vomit?” Logan asks musingly, and Remus stabs a finger at him.

“You,” he says. “I like you.”

“God, I forgot how weird you are,” Roman mutters.

And just like that, his mood sours, and he freezes. Roman’s hands are still on his arms, and suddenly, he is very, very aware of that fact. Like the contact is burning, burning his sleeves, burning his skin, his flesh right down to the bone, leaving scorch marks in his marrow. Roman could tear him apart if he wanted. He wonders if he knows it, if he understands the kind of power he holds right now.

_I forgot how weird you are._

He’s weird. Strange. Downright disturbing, if you ask some people, and he wears that badge with pride. He was weird as a kid, too, and Roman should know that. Should be expecting it. Unless, in all the years they spent apart, he built up another version of his twin in his head. One who didn’t spout odd shit at all hours of the day, who wasn’t fascinated by blood and guts and gore, who didn’t scare the hell out of half the people they met, who didn’t get them kicked out of more than half a dozen foster homes because he just couldn’t be normal enough.

He dares a glance at Roman’s face. He doesn’t seem upset. Seems almost fond. But that’s not enough.

“Am I?” he says.

If Roman’s been looking for someone else, a version of him that doesn’t actually exist, he needs to know.

But Roman just grins at him and ruffles his hair.

“Wouldn’t have you any other way,” he says. “I don’t know if we have zombie vomit nail polish, but I bet we can come up with something.”

He pumps his fists into the air. “Fuck yeah!” he says, in order to avoid having to deal with the fact that his heart feels gooey and melty. Maybe it really is melting. Now that would be a sight to see. Alas, no one is likely to let him cut open his rib cage to look.

“Wait, so is this what we’re doing? I need time to adjust to new plans,” Virgil says, wide-eyed.

“Oh, I mean, it was just a thought,” Patton says. “We have space for company and I thought it might be fun to spend time together. Y’know, since I think we’ll be doing a lot of that in the future, probably. But if it’s too sudden, we don’t have to—”

“No, no, it’s fine, we’re good, lemme just go get Janus from the wine aisle I’ll-be-right-back.” Virgil spits out the last words all in a rush, and Remus turns to watch as he backpedals out of the pasta aisle like… well, like a disaster gay who has a crush a mile wide and doesn’t want to have to own up to it yet.

Well, there’s time for that. There’ll be time for a lot of things now, he thinks.

“It’s funny,” Roman says, and Remus looks back at him, reveling in the fact that he _can_ , “but I imagined this a lot, you know? And somehow, I never thought that it would happen in a pasta aisle. And I really didn’t think that you’d run over me with your shopping cart, but I guess I should’ve seen that part coming.”

He flexes his fingers. He’s still holding the box of macaroni. It’s going to be some damn good macaroni. He’s certain of that.

He grins. “Yeah, maybe you should have,” he says, and Roman rolls his eyes and punches his shoulder, and then slings an arm around him again, and he relaxes into the touch. Fourteen years, and so many things have changed, but some things haven’t, and evidently, one of those things is that Roman loves him.

It’s a missing puzzle piece slotting back into place, at long last. Which is a tame metaphor, for him, but he thinks it fits, just like he and Roman still seem to.

For a moment, he’s eleven years old again, and it’s him and Roman against the world. And then, the vision fades, and he’s twenty-five and standing in a grocery store, but he’s got his brother at his side again, so that’s just as good.

From the look on his face, he thinks Roman agrees with him too.

**Author's Note:**

> Janus, halfway across the store: huh, sure sounds like there's a commotion in the direction where I left Remus and Virgil
> 
> Janus:
> 
> Janus:
> 
> Janus: not my problem
> 
> Also not quite pictured: Roman frantically trying to figure out why this strange mustached man is so familiar, then noticing the streak in Remus' hair and being like, oh?? This is _my_ strange mustached man??
> 
> I really don't know where this one came from, but I ended up liking it more than I thought it would, so I figured I'd post it. I'm so close to officially being on break, and tbh I am so excited to finally have more time to write! Expect some more fics in the near future, because I have ideas and I'm gonna make that all y'all's problem!
> 
> Until then, I'm @whenisitenoughtrees on tumblr if you'd ever like to say hello!


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